Her take on the reality of Sarah Palin's stand on Abortion ties it up in a really great package with talking points that should not be missed by women and parent's with daughters.
While I am unhappy with her take on Obama's stance on the issue of Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol, I still find merit in her commments.
Every woman/parent needs to check our Smiley's take on Palin/Pregnancy/Abortion at HuffPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
This is the part that really hit home with me as a parent:
In a Palin world, if my daughter wanted birth control, she wouldn't be able to get any, and if I wanted sex education to be taught in my son's school, I would be out of luck. If a girl I knew were raped and impregnated by her uncle and she elected to have an abortion, she would not be allowed to do so. She wouldn't even be allowed to take the morning after pill in case he got her pregnant.
In this instance I also understand why Senator Obama is asking that we back off and respect the privacy of the Palin family but I do see what Jane Smiley is saying in her assertion that he is wrong in this instance and why.
I like you, Barack, but you don't get it either. The issues of birth control and abortion have been made into public issues by the right wing, and millions of women and girls have suffered because the right wing wants to impose its ideas of what women should do upon every woman in America including those who don't share and have never shared their values. So, Barack, I suggest that you, as a man, should do the backing off.
This point is so important in this election and for the future of women and men from one end of this country to the other. To ignore this is to place the decisions that should be ours, and ours alone, in peril.
Bristol Palin's pregnancy, which her mother has known about for months, is at the heart of this battle. It has been shown over and over that abstinence education doesn't work, while sex education does work. Do I accept that teenagers have sex? You bet I do, and I tell the ones I have borne how to make it safe and what to watch out for and be careful of, girls and boys. Sarah Palin, for whatever reason, did not do the same thing, and yet she presumes, PRESUMES, to tell me as a mother and a woman what I can and cannot do with my body, and what I can and cannot provide for my children.
Sorry for the shortness of this diary but the article is not long and I did not want to repost it here. I just felt this needed to be said in view of the back and forth over what should be discussed and why.